Canne recently wrote a post about violence in the media in regards to the “Dark Knight shooting,” and John wrote a related post about whether the shooting could somehow affect anime releases in the US. Both posts piqued my interest as well as my agreement – I agree with John that the incident won’t affect anime and I agree with Canne that the media is not to blame…

This is going to be the final post in my Fundamentals of Japanese series. I’m using it to discuss the two last grammar points I feel are important for a basic understanding of the language, but couldn’t fit into the other parts…

In Part 3 I discussed the very basics of Japanese grammar with particles and the “to be” verb です(desu). Today I’ll be moving up to the next step in grammar fundamentals with the conjugation of Japanese verbs and adjectives…

Now that I’ve covered the Japanese syllabary and writing systems, in this section I’ll be going over the basics of Japanese sentences. To me, the most fundamental parts of Japanese grammar are particles and the “to be” verb, です(desu), which is what I’ll be discussing here in Part 3…

Here’s Part 2 of my ongoing Fundamentals of Japanese post series. In Part 1 I went over how to pronounce Japanese and read it using English letters (romaji). Now I’m going to discuss how it’s read using the three Japanese alphabets…

Welcome to the first installment in a series of posts I’m going to be writing about the fundamentals of the Japanese language. Part 1 will be an introduction to the post series as well as covering an aspect of the language I feel is the very first step one should start with when learning it – pronunciation…

This topic was a recent entry on AnimeNation’s Ask John column. It begs the question of why American anime fans are often vehemently opposed to moe, fan service, or any other type of anime that sexualizes its characters, while anime that feature extreme violence are rarely opposed and are instead praised. The opposite seems to be true in Japan, with the Japanese fandom adoring fanciful, cute series while the dark, violent series are fewer and less adored. So what determines this difference between how American and Japanese fans react to sexuality in anime versus violence in anime?…

It’s not unusual for people who become anime fans to also become interested in the country that anime comes from – Japan. I’ve seen this interest in some form or other in most of the anime fans I’ve encountered, ranging from mild to extreme. There are people who take up a slight interest in an aspect or two of Japanese culture, and perhaps learn a few Japanese words, but otherwise don’t pursue Japan/Japanese things…all the way down to what the Internet calls “weeaboos” and “Japanophiles,” or people who convince themselves that Japan is superior to other countries and they insist on incorporating Japanese words and cultural habits into their everyday lives, becoming a Japan connoisseur in terms of things like music and food, yearning to go to Japan, and even wishing they were Japanese. But does every person who gets into anime necessarily take up an interest in Japan, whether mild or extreme?…

On the very extreme end of anime fandom lies the otaku who develop romantic feelings for certain anime characters, to the point of actually desiring a 2-D relationship over a real, 3-D one. This topic of major moe, mai waifus, and dakimakuras is nothing new to otaku culture, but it’s certainly among the most controversial. Bitmap over on The Untold Story of Altair and Vega recently wrote a post about the very subject, which sparked some thoughts for me…